Poo-Poo Platter

Author's Note: This is my first submission to Poop Report, even though I've been browsing for over five years and anonymously browsing for longer. We all know how the story ends: not with redemption, but with "I couldn't believe it. I thought these stories were apocryphal. I shat my pants." If you're expecting something different, you won't get it. I over-ate, drove home, didn't quite make it, and shat my pants.

Sorry to disappoint.

I ended a long-term stint in graduate school last year. Part of graduate school is poverty, and poverty means not eating regularly or well. So we enter the story.

I expected a good meal from the local Chinese seafood buffet--they've never done me wrong before, and for twelve dollars, you get all the lunch you can snarfle down and a drink. Twelve dollars is, these days, one-third of my monthly food budget, and I wanted to get my money's worth. With this in mind, I ate all the food I haven't been eating over the past couple months: coconut shrimp, orange chicken, General Tsao's chicken, seaweed salad, four different kinds of sushi rolls, two different kinds of nigiri, baby octopus, ginger, wasabi, fried plantains, and a soft drink. It was amazing, and I ate to capacity ... and then a bit more. I paid the bill and left.

In the parking lot, I felt a sudden bloating start to take hold in my lower abdomen. "intestinal gas," I thought. "I can hold out," I convinced myself. "I'll be fine," I reasoned. "It'll be okay," I concluded.

It was not okay.

Thundering down the highway, I started to have second thoughts about not using their bathroom. I'm what the site would call a "shameful shitter" (Doniker's term, I believe), and my cheeks seldom kiss porcelain outside my own. Unfortunately for me, I had relocated from the Midwest back to the Southwest, and now live in a fairly industrial area--no ready bathrooms here. Five more miles. Three. One. I turned off the freeway.

Following Google Maps and concentrating on keeping my O-ring clenched, I ended up at a parking garage. This, Google decided, was now "home," even though it had steered me correctly home hundreds of times prior.

Gritting my teeth, I heaved the car around toward home--only a few miles away, but a few miles too far.

Waiting for the parking-lot gate to open, I was met with a wail from my abdomen; peristalsis, pressure, volume, and mass were all assailing my poor clenched anus.

I swung into a parking spot, bloating and discomfort in full swing. "I'm going to make it! Thank God!" In celebration, I arched up slightly in the seat, allowing the tiniest of farts out, hoping it would relieve some pressure. And this is where it all went wrong; rather than a helpful squeaker, I received a dollop of brown sludge in my underwear. "Did I ... just ..." And then the smell hit me, hard.

I had shat my pants.

Opening the car door, I race-walked, my puckered O-ring clenched tightly, to my apartment. "Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohno!" was all I could whisper, under my breath, my personal shit-mantra. Call it a shantra, if you will. When I stopped to unlock the front door, my sphincter decided it was home and, therefore, free, and I deposited a baseball-sized blob of poop into my underwear. Flinging the door open, not bothering to take my shoes off, I race-walked to the bathroom and, narrowly avoiding the cat, executed The Move over the side of the bathtub.

All hell broke loose. A sludge of soft-serve consistency was rocketed out of me, pushed aside by a grape-cluster of marble-to-golfball-sized turdlets. These emerged in rapid succession, like a paintball gun switched to automatic fire. I had clearly not been drinking enough water. I was perched on the side of the bathtub, trying to hang my anus over the far end without falling backward into the mess, also trying to peel off my slimed underwear and possibly salvageable shorts (black, luckily). And all the while trying to keep everything off of my shoes, off the inquisitive cat, and trying not to step in any of the drops.

Oh the drops. A clear reminder, a stark admonishment: you just shat yourself. "Out, out, damned spot" indeed. To add to the farce, the cat was busy curiously investigating the drops, then decided they were worthy of ingestion. Thanks, cat.

In the shower, after cleaning the floor, hand-washing and rinsing out my clothing, and after flushing the incriminating evidence down the drain, I became somewhat philosophical: "I now have a worthwhile submission for Poop Report."

Hopefully this was an enjoyable read. Sure, it follows a familiar trajectory--I went, I ate, I thought I could hold it, and I couldn't--but there is a lesson in this: NEVER let out that pleading fart, that one promising temporary relief until you can get "just another hundred steps further." It will coax you, plead with you, and ultimately betray you.

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About the Author

Recovering PhD student, full-time thinker.

7 Comments on "Poo-Poo Platter"

I have a set of rules to avoid self-shat, one of which you should include: never eat sushi from a buffet...especially if you live more than an hour or so inland. Other notable additions include never drink bubble tea, blue cream soda creates smurf diarrhea and eating two-bite brownies takes me to my own personal hell.

This here's Little Brittle and the C-bag. And he's kickin' it, elderly school.

Beautifully written, and oh so relatable. My mother suffered a similar fate a few years ago, albeit in a cream colored skirt suit. To my horror, she took the skirt with brazen brown shart mark to the dry cleaners and tried to pass it off as a menstrual stain. But given her postmenopausal age of 65, I don't think they believed it.

crohnsplosion: Good rules, these. I know that the site went though a "green poop" craze a while ago--some kinds of blue dye apparently create bright-green leavings.

I was caught, pun intended, with my pants down: this place had always done me right with respect to the quality and preparation of the food. I strongly suspect that my own gluttony was to blame in this case. ;)

Southwind: thank you for your kind words! I'm glad to hear that you (seem to have) enjoyed the writing.

Your poor mother, that's terrible! I'm glad that I didn't need to dry-clean the clothing involved. Luckily for me, I have an exceptionally understanding girlfriend who was unfazed at the sight of my shorts and underwear, mostly-washed-out, in the sink. She's a keeper, that one. :)

Of course she was unfazed by your soiled undies. Your girlfriend, if she's anything like any of the other women with whom I have been acquainted intimately, spends half her life walking around with some kind of protection in her underwear, trying to ward of unsightly stains. Sure, your stains may have come from your rear end and not your reproductive system but the difference is not that great.

Great story, well written and amusing. If you don't mind I am going to add the word "shantra to my vocabulary.

I would have shit my pants yesterday but luckily, or not, I wasn't wearing any. I had just risen and went straight to the bathroom for my morning whiz and was in the buff since I sleep commando. Halfway through the whiz I relaxed my buttocks to allow what I imagined to be a little gas to escape. Much to my dismay the gas turned out to be a blob of liquid poo that for some reason was dark green and highly odiferous. Luckily my bathroom has a tile floor and the cleanup was simple but the aroma hung around until lunch time.

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